I saw this old school Shaw Brothers movie last night called "Heroes of the East". It was very entertaining as it showcased different martial art styles from China and Japan. A perfect blend of action and humor. The main star is Gordon Liu otherwise known for his role as the elder master "Pai Mei" in the Kill Bill series. You can watch the entire movie below on YouTube with the captions setting turned on for English subs.

Just wanted to log in to say thanks for all the kind words, it really means a lot. I won't be coming back for the foreseeable future, but all the well wishes definitely encourage me to do so, in time. And it's okay that people know what happened, my apologies for disappearing like that.. I did realise I would be letting down some people on here, since I promised to do certain things for them (Dorian, Mittens, Ryudo, my apologies, I'll pay you guys back one day, bet on it). Also apologies to my fellow staff members (and Dojo forum members) for bailing out like I have, if I could turn back the clock, I would have contacted you guys and the Dojo with what was going on, I feel bad about it.

I also hope ThyDarkAngel is doing fine himself, he's going through with difficulties himself also. If you're reading this, take care of yourself and all the best. Same goes for any of you going through hard times right now. I wish all the best to all of the members on here [for example: Orange (hope you have the best damn wedding there ever is and ever will be) and Kenny (keep on living the dream)] in the future.

Don't want to make a big deal out of my absence, but seeing all of the posts in here, I felt I had to.

I vote Crimson Ryan or Kenny for mod!

I'll always be on PSN or my Hotmail if any of you guys fancy a chat. Sorry if this comes off as pretentious, I was just rather touched by all the nice messages.You guys and gals are the best there is. See you around (and maybe again, in the future).Be well.Henry out.

Yes, which is why it's essential to start with the first one. I began playing Splinter Cell games with Pandora Tomorrow (the second game in the series), and went on from there. Eventually I wanted to play the original, but was so used to the later games it made the first unplayable.

I would have voted for a third party candidate with the full expectation that they wouldn't have won. You can say it's throwing your vote away, but I'd argue voting for anyone other than the person you actually want is throwing your vote away.

I mean, I agree with you that it is nice to have a diversity, and I do think ancient culture should be protected. But we have to ask ourselves whether it's more important to be citizens of little insular nations who look upon others of different race/religion/location as being different, or to be citizens of the world who can go where we want and be treated equally wherever. I think the latter is what we need to aim for, and more to the point, I think it's an inevitability now, and probably necessary for the growth of humankind. The issue most people never consider is that if someone comes from another country without documentation and happens to commit a crime, there is no way that law enforcement can know who did it . For all they know, that person doesn't even exist in this country. That is a major problem, one of the biggest reasons that border control is such an issue, and yet people never seem to bring it up seriously, as if saying it will make them sound racist. Gotta stay politically correct!People have this insane misconception that it all has to do with the uptight white man being afraid of brown folk moving in and taking over, but that's so far off the point it's not even funny.It's important to have some knowledge of everyone in the country. It'd be dangerous as fuck to just let people jump across borders without getting it cleared first.The only other way to do what you're suggesting is to have a complete one-world nation, and that'd be even more dangerous than the open-borders idea.

HISTORY OF THE SHENMUE II CHARACTER DATABASE PROJECT Ever since casting my eyes upon screenshots of Shenmue published in the (now defunct) UK magazine Computer and Video Games, I have been absolutely enthralled by the series. This game was definitely something different. As the famous tagline proclaimed in the trailers before its release – RPG had changed. Sure, hailing the game as being its own exciting new “genre” with a somewhat silly acronym as its name (FREE- Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment) was being a tad overzealous perhaps, but you had to admire Yu Suzuki’s ambition for this game. When I finally got to play it on the Christmas morning of 2000, it did not disappoint. The atmosphere created was just amazing to me – a realistic, living, breathing town with over 300 individual characters – all with their own specific daily routines and, in supplementary materials, all named and given detailed biographies! Throw in the fantastic music and the engaging (if not completely original) story and you really had something special. And this was only part one of the saga...

Bundled with the game was the ‘Shenmue Passport’ disc. Through the Dreamcast’s internet connection, this enabled access to all sorts of information about the game, as well as ranking leaderboards for the various mini-games and the chance to get exclusive capsule toys. One of the best features was the character profile section however; as you met and conversed with the characters during a playthrough, their profiles would gradually be added to the Passport. Now to some, giving all 300+ characters names, stats, and biographies may seem extraneous, (especially given characters that Ryo can’t even speak to have detailed information about them!) but it really shows the love and care put into the game by the developers and the amount of depth to Shenmue that few games have matched.

PASSPORT EXPIRED The Passport service was eventually taken offline in April 2002, but thankfully the character profiles had also been published in Prima’s strategy guide book for the game, so the information was still readily available to fans.Which brings us to the sequel game, Shenmue II – which I got the following Christmas in 2001. This sadly could end up being the last game in the series, despite it ending on a cliffhanger and at a game-changing point in the saga’s story. Nonetheless, the sequel’s world was even bigger than the first’s– Ryo travels to Hong Kong to continue his quest, with most of its areas completely dwarfing Shenmue I’s in terms of size, as well as the amount of characters – around 700. There was also a lot more mini-games and sidequests to discover, and fans generally agree it is more action-packed and that the plot moves a lot quicker than the first game (though some will argue Shenmue I’s atmosphere has more charm) And what of these 700-odd characters? Were they all named and profiled as per the original game? As it turns out, yes – but these were not readily available to the fans outside of Japan.

Firstly, unlike the first Shenmue, there was no Passport. There was no Prima guide either, as the Dreamcast version had been cancelled in America. America eventually saw an updated version of Shenmue II on the Microsoft Xbox, and a Prima guide was finally published. However, unlike the Shenmue I book, there were only profiles on the main characters; Ryo, Shenhua, Xiuying, Fangmei, Ren, Joy, Wong, Lan Di, Dou Niu and Yuan. The Xbox version, with the new snapshot feature, did include profiles on some of the other characters; unlocked when you took pictures of them, but it didn't come close to having profiles for all the characters. Would we ever know the names and backgrounds of the reams of anonymous characters?

A FAN EFFORT Shortly after I had completed Shenmue II, I looked around on the internet for fansites/information about the series, ultimately finding the excellent Shenmue Dojo website. I joined the forums, and this was in fact one of the first message boards I signed up to on the internet. My handle on the forum was (and still is) ‘Miles Prower’, as I am also a long-time fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog series of games (and Sega games in general). I made a lot of good friends through the Dojo community and have many fond memories associated with the forums. I think between us we have probably discussed every single aspect of the games to death, but as many fans will attest, you find or notice something new with every playthrough of these wonderful games. Not to mention the very active hacking/modding scene that developed, mostly headed by longtime member LanDC, in which reams of unused content was discovered and many interesting and or humourous modifications made to the game. I still get a warm nostalgic feeling every time I watch LanDC’s Road to Amihama videos in particular.

And indeed, the question of whether detailed character profiles existed for Shenmue II’s cast was raised in discussion. In a thread from 2003, a member named Eek the Cat shared some scans of a guidebook he owned published in Japan called the Shenmue II Perfect Guidebook. The scans showed that there were indeed names and profiles for each and every character. Eek was even kind enough to put all of the scans together on a CD for me and mail it to me, and even threw in a couple of audio CD’s he had compiled containing music from Shenmue II (sadly the second game never had any official soundtracks released).

The problem? Being that this book was from Japan, the character names were in Chinese and the information in Japanese. Through discussion in the topic, another forum member called khien agreed to help with translating the character names as she could read Chinese. And so began the effort to translate the many character profiles. I began by gradually posting them within the topic, and then eventually creating a website (which, thanks to Web Archive, you can still view here , albeit with most of the images missing).

Continuing into 2004 and beyond, progress was quite slow, mainly due to me starting university. Khien’s life ended up becoming quite busy as well, but thanks to the efforts of another forum member, Oda Ryo, the translation work still continued. The forum member Kiyuu (possibly Japan’s biggest Shenmue fan, and often referred to as the ‘Shenmue Queen’), also informed me that another book existed, the Shenmue II Complete Guide, which contained profiles for characters not included in the Perfect Guidebook; namely those for the many pedestrians who wander the streets of Hong Kong. I made the effort to acquire this book myself and make scans for the remaining profiles.

RESSURECTING THE PROJECT As the years went on, however, my free time became less and less. I studied for three years at university and after graduating in 2008, I was working full time; in short I was growing up. It was also looking increasingly unlikely that a Shenmue III would ever emerge. Life went on. However, my enthusiasm to complete the project was somewhat fired up again when Peter from the forums (who most likely owns the biggest Shenmue collection in Ireland) got in touch with me on Facebook asking if I was still working on it, as the Dojo staff had managed to get an interview with one of the voice actors for the English dub of Shenmue II (a very interesting read by the way, which can be found here , and they had requested that video clips be assembled of the characters he voiced, which he supplied a list of – but only by name and brief descriptions. Using the information from my project I helped with finding some of them. I then found myself wanting to get the project finished once and for all, and got back in touch with Oda Ryo who happily assisted me with getting the remaining names translated.

I had also spoken to the member ‘thegreatchai’, who had also been attempting to catalogue the character information on her wiki site, and over time we assisted each other greatly. I began transferring the information to an Excel spreadsheet with the intention of creating a complete database of all the Shenmue II characters – which after assembling a numbered list I discovered there are exactly 700 – surely a deliberate intention of the creators? At any rate, after a few months work the project was finally finished. I am glad that this information is now easily accessible to Shenmue fans, and while some may consider me obsessive or downright insane for pursuing with the project, it was worth it for a game series that I love so much and one day hope will be continued in some form. We can but hope. The saga may still go on....

Hey, you've played the best. Great games. Outcast was brilliant. Yeah, I love Gabriel Knight. The first game in the series is my favorite. Great atmosphere and story. Wicked neat setting, and Tim Curry plays Gabriel Knight. Can't go wrong with that.

When I was a kid, a guy tried to grab my sister so I stabbed him in the eye with a pen. Just an object I had in my pocket did a tone of damage to him, the cops had to take him to the hospital.

Sorry Axm, I know you're emotional and I don't blame you, but I think we need to find out the reasons why. I don't think he just assumed guns were cool and killing a bunch of kids would be fun. Theres a cause thats much deeper then that, and if we ignore that and just blame the tool we'll never really stop this from happening. No matter how good legislation is, guns will slip through and tragedies will happen even in Europe and Asia (especially Japan). Its stupid to allow automatic weapons and such high caliber guns to the public, but he could have made a bomb and did even more damage.

I guess it's possible you might have genuinely been happier in the east, but I sometimes wonder whether people who say that kind of thing are actually being realistic about what the "east" is like. One will encounter much of the same difficulties anywhere in world as far as I can see. There are differences of course, but sometimes I think people can be a bit romantic about the notion of living in places like Japan or China or whatever. Especially as they just as hyper materialistic (maybe even more so now) as the west is. You could argue that their cultures are perhaps less individualistic than ours, but even then there are negatives that go along with that, like the extra pressure to conform and fit in. They are still great places, but I think sometimes people aren't realistic. It's swings and roundabouts, there are plenty of things you could despise about the culture of those eastern countries too.

Gonna throw in a recommendation for Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. It's a great place for newcomers to step in ("casual mode" means no perma-death for your characters). It's a really fun game, when you're in the mood for a strategy game.

Also, doesn't this pervert the very idea of a peaceful protest? It's certainly not to meet force with force. That just breeds more conflict.

I think that is part of the point they are trying to make here. The current opinion on guns is so bad that people think anyone with a gun is up to no good, which is most certainly not the case. It is the right of an American to own a gun but for some reason half of Americans have equated guns to being bad, mainly because of how unfamiliar the average person is with firearms.

Not to be overly patriotic but America is all about keeping the freedom of the individual. Gun laws are getting raised to bullshit levels (It wasn't until recently that cops or security employees of the US government was able to carry handguns as civillians) that are really testing the constitution.

^online feminazi activists will find faults in anything, best to just ignore them at this point. but hey I can understand, it's easier to combat "virtual sexism" to gain attention rather than actually taking a risk trying to help real women rights in places like Afghanistan and Sudan. who cares if women are having their vaginas ritually mutilated across the world and sold in to marriage before they hit 10, what's more important is that we stop female video game characters from wearing tight jeans :nice!:

Ehh not too shure about those drawings looks a bit off to his real jacket i actually made a hazuki jacket and it is 100% accurate down to the pockets and the placement of the tiger n patches. the drawings just look off and it will most likely be wayyy over priced and not leather. my jacket is real cowhide leather and was 300$ just for the jacket. I will stay with my rendition :)

i wear this when i ride my motorcycle and yes i created a phoenix dragon mirror helmet too :)

How is making fun of this game going to generate good press? I'm sorry to be a downer on anyone who likes these people but perpetuating the the same shitty jokes that originate from people who only ever played the first 15 minutes of the game are not going to help us get out of the niche hell hole Shenmue has been stuck in.

Im so tired of shit like this. All everyone ever associates Shenmue with is Sailors and feeding cats. Thats like 1% of the game but for some reason many of the ADHD who make throw back reviews, impressions, lets plays, rankings etc they all focus on just the BS 1% and sometimes I think it has tarnished the Shenmue name so badly to the point where I think Sega thinks everyone see's Shenmue as a joke./rant

Also, sorry if I came off a little hostile. I really didn't intend to. But I will gladly tell animegamer to piss off if he accuses me of being a troll again, and tell SEF to fuck off if he accuses me of being a self hating white middle class man again. Night. Love ya'll

You DO post like a hand-wringer though sometimes, so maybe I "didn't know anything about you" enough, to get the "white Brit" part wrong, but the way you post tells us all quite enough. Because multiple times I have read threads where you will take whichever side is different from us "privileged" Westerners. This is just the latest in a string, where since most of the protagonists are already "privileged", you have to narrow it down to a different gender instead. When we don't agree, you get violent and shouty about it, like this topic earlier...The way you throw your opinions out there with a lot of brute force doesn't help things, I can kinda understand why, but this forum isn't like the rest of the internet, the rest of the internet is full of mouth-breathers who think how their chosen media tells them to, and likes to conform to mob-rule. We're not like that here, this is one of the very few places on the internet where the majority of people who post are smart enough to have independent thoughts and alternative viewpoints on things, so that kind of tone is just not needed.

On topic of the subject, society has its own evolution and will eventually do what it has to do. Trying to speed it up by being radical about it doesn't usually help things. TBH I just think that Sarkeesian lady is interested in Youtube hits so is following the tried and tested "controversy" path to gain some attention, along with jumping on the coat-tails of gamergate (and it worked, 'cos I hadn't even heard of her until I read you mention her, which led me to that #gamergate article on Forbes.)Also, nature is cruel and through all of nature, the strong do tend to prey on the weak. We humans are mostly past fearing nature, but that particular part of nature is quite a glaringly obvious one in the world today. The weak are still the prey of the strong, games and media like to remind us of this concept quite a lot. A fucking terrible looking brothel is just a tiny little part of that. It happens in real life too, sadly (where the "weak" are women/slaves from another country, and the "strong" are the (yes, mostly male) vicious and well armed gangs/militias with the fucking terrible looking brothels. And so it goes all the way up, until you get to the biggest bullies (entire countries/continents) being unfair to smaller ones...)

Does it make an asshole to think that charities have become WAY too invasive nowadays? It's near impossible to simply go about YOUR OWN business undisturbed these days. In one of the local supermarkets, which only has the one entry/exit hall (which is quite normal here), they literally stand on BOTH sides of the exit side, so you can't simply walk on the other side of someone else to use them as a "shield". Honestly they are stood in Police-checkpoint formation, almost kind of intimidating. I thought the United Kingdom had "aggressive begging" laws that were meant to curb this kind of thing?

For the record I did give them some money, but I still think it errs on the "unacceptable" side of things to stand there covering the exit like that. The shopping centre is the same, they stand about in a totally invasive way making just walking past them more of an issue than it should be. Charity has always been a thing, but the overly Capitalist way that the world is now where people and companies are completely bare-faced and don't even try to hide the fact that they are out to hawk every last penny from you via whichever means possible, even if it borders on illegal (or actually WAS illegal, in the case of the banks being forced to give people money back for loans the people had borrowed with unauthorised added costs on) means that charities, whose raison d'être has always been to ask for money anyway, have had to step it up a few notches...

FWIW I was against the ice bucket challenge as well and made myself quite unpopular on FB and my workplace for my lack of enthusiasm. To me, it is simply a case of "charity begins at home", and I deserve to be allowed to deal with my own needs before anyone else's...

Pft, totally forgot to mention Fatal Frame and Bladestorm. Just more going for them I guess.Normally I'd agree about Dynasty/Samurai Warriors pretty much being rehashed every time, but this new one actually looks... new. It seems like they've sped the action up a bit (taking a cue from the other "Warriors" games they've made no doubt, like Ken's Rage 2 and One-Piece) and made it flashier, while it's also supposed to be much more story/character-based this time around. It wouldn't have aroused my attention otherwise, but it actually looks much better to me than these games usually do.

Anyway, been meaning to post this.My brother had a great idea a while back to do a T-shirt design (I forget which T-shirt site it was going to be for exactly). He asked me to draw something up combining Red Dead Redemption with Toy Story. I'd do the base drawing, and he'd photoshop in the color afterward.We finished it a while ago, but we haven't done anything with it yet.Anyway, just wanted to share what it looked like. I think it turned out pretty good.

^^Made the final one small, just because I'm not sure if we're still planning to do anything with it.Of course we were aiming to make it as much like the actual cover as possible, so the claw game toys are in the background in place of the real cover's riders, and instead of the American flag, we put the Star Command flag. And the little ratings logo says "Play nice, we toys see everything." That was all my brother's work. Made me laugh when I first saw it.

Well, this last episode pretty much made me hate the show and I'm all but done with it. I'll likely continue reading the books but not watch the show.

Basically with the death of Shireen. This deviation from the books served absolutely no purpose other than to apply "shock value" and to otherwise be emotionally manipulative. When I can see the frame-work and the deliberate choices made in order to create buzz, well, I just don't think I care anymore. This whole thing just left a bad taste in my mouth and I don't like being manipulated this way, so I won't. Fuck you show.